Neil Warnock has insisted tonight’s match at Arsenal will feel like therapy for the Cardiff City manager and his players following the disappearance of Emiliano Sala.
Warnock has described the game as a “distraction” but one that may help his squad as they come to terms with the events of the last nine days.
After paying tribute to the strength and determination of the Sala family – currently in the Channel Islands as they oversee a new search for the player and his pilot – the Bluebirds manager and his players return to playing football at the Emirates Stadium.
“In an ideal world I don’t think I’d like another game at all the way I’m feeling,” said Warnock, who has revealed he considered quitting in the days after the plane disappeared.
“Football is important, but a tragedy like this does open things up more. From the players’ point of view they do need some form of distraction because it is so much doom and gloom. The place is so sombre all around the club.
“We almost need some sort of game to get firing again and get something out of the system. I know people say life goes on, but we definitely couldn’t have played on Saturday.
“I think we have just got to get on with things now. It is a football club and there are rules and regulations with the Premier League, what we can do and can’t do. We have just got to do the best we can out of the situation we’ve got.”
After 40 years in football management, Warnock thought he had seen it all but the Sala tragedy has brought the Cardiff City manager to the verge of walking away.
The 70-year-old admitted that it had been “the most difficult week in my career by an absolute mile.”
As the latest rescue efforts to try to find Sala and the pilot, David Ibbotson, of the Piper Malibu plane in which he disappeared on a flight from Nantes to Cardiff last Monday were getting underway in Guernsey, Warnock broke his silence on his own state of mind and the grief being felt by his players.
“It’s been a traumatic week and even now I can’t get my head around the situation. Not very often have I ever said I am lost for words, but that’s how I am at the moment,” he said.
“It’s impossible to sleep. To be honest, I considered whether or not I wanted to carry on being a football manager 24 hours a day last week.
“Even as I sit here now that would be the case because there are more important things. It takes something like this to make you realise that.
“It would be wrong to say everything is back to normal and I’m firing on all cylinders. It’s not like that.
“My age isn’t helping and it feels strange. You feel tired all the time, even when you have had a sleep, and the doctor says that is due to stress and it doesn’t seem to get any easier at the moment.”
Warnock confirmed that he had sought help from the League Managers Association and that the sombre mood around the club had led to players being given counselling.
“We have had to go day by day to get over these traumatic events. The emotional effect the Leicester City game had on us, even though the loss wasn’t about our club, made the game almost irrelevant,” he added.
“We definitely couldn’t have played on Saturday and now we’ve just got to get on with things. Whether Tuesday night will be good in that it puts something else in my mind I don’t know.
“There has been a sombre mood all week, but it probably hit me harder than anyone else because I met Emiliano and had been talking to him for the last six or seven weeks.
“I called him ‘Emile’ because I told him I probably wouldn’t get his name right and I told him he would fit in very well with my team because of the way he dressed. He had holes in his trousers and looked like a tramp.
“We’ve got a few like that. He said he would ‘score goals for me’ and I told him I knew he would. I thought this was going to be a turning point for us, but now it’s turned into a massive blow.
“It was always a massive job for us in the first place to stay in the Premier League – now it is doubly massive. We would rather have Emiliano with us and get relegated than not have him.
“This is when you have to show your leadership and you have to show the lads you are in charge. We have to perform a miracle.
“We have to get on the bandwagon at Arsenal and then three of the next five are at home. Everyone will write us off, but not many people would have thought we’d get 19 points by now.”